Sharps M J, Antonelli J R
Department of Psychology, California State University, Fresno 93740-8019, USA.
J Genet Psychol. 1997 Sep;158(3):347-55. doi: 10.1080/00221329709596673.
A paired-associates task was used to investigate the degree to which young and older adults benefit from visual and semantic support for recall. Respondents were asked to recall pictorial or verbal items that were either semantically related or unrelated. As has been previously observed in spatial memory tasks, older adults benefited to a greater degree from pictorial materials than did young adults, but only for semantically related items. No such effect was observed for unrelated items. In a second experiment, the imposition of a speed requirement at retrieval eradicated the unequal recall facilitation effect for the older participants. The results of this study are consistent with Craik's (1986) environmental support theory and suggest a link between visuospatial loss and cognitive speed loss in the normal aging process.
一项配对联想任务被用于研究年轻人和年长者在回忆时从视觉和语义支持中受益的程度。要求被试回忆语义相关或不相关的图片或文字项目。正如之前在空间记忆任务中所观察到的那样，年长者比年轻人从图片材料中受益的程度更大，但仅限于语义相关的项目。对于不相关的项目，未观察到这种效应。在第二个实验中，在检索时施加速度要求消除了老年参与者回忆促进效果不平等的现象。这项研究的结果与克雷克（1986）的环境支持理论一致，并表明在正常衰老过程中视觉空间能力丧失与认知速度丧失之间存在联系。
